[Professorsofteaching] Fwd: When Faculty Stop Showing Up Faculty disengagement is reshaping campus life, one closed door at a time.

[Miguel Zavala]

[image: image.png]
When Faculty Stop Showing Up
Faculty disengagement is reshaping campus life, one closed door at a time.

[image: When Faculty Stop Showing Up.png]

By David DeMatthews <https://www.chronicle.com/author/david-dematthews>
March 20, 2026

Adark hallway is higher education’s warning sign. On most workdays, I walk
a long hallway lined with closed faculty doors. The nameplates belong to
people I respect, but the lights behind those doors are often dark. One
student recently told me that she stopped visiting office hours altogether,
assuming no one would be there.

National data echo her experience. According to a 2024 *Inside Higher Ed*
survey
<https://www.insidehighered.com/news/student-success/academic-life/2024/07/03/survey-college-student-academic-experience>,
35 percent of undergraduates said their academic success would improve if
professors got to know them better. Pandemic burnout
<https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-great-faculty-disengagement>, stagnant
salaries
<https://findingequilibriumfuturehighered.substack.com/p/should-faculty-teach-more>,
politicized attacks on higher education, and the growing reliance on
digital teaching tools could help explain why faculty may be spending more
time off campus. For critics who point to shrinking teaching loads at some
institutions, professors simply are not teaching enough
<https://manhattan.institute/article/its-time-for-college-professors-to-teach>.
But whatever the reasons, students are left confronting more closed doors
and fewer opportunities to build relationships that matter.

Consider the growing tolerance of long‑distance residency. I know of deans
and faculty members who have lived well beyond the reasonable commuting
radius of their campuses for years, some with explicit waivers and others
without. The result is predictable. Fewer open doors, weaker advising, and
less day‑to‑day participation in shared governance and service. Much of
this quiet acceptance began during the pandemic, when the rapid shift to
online teaching and faculty meetings made working from afar feel
temporarily normal. Until recently, expectations for faculty living within
commuting distance were often poorly codified, and many institutions are
only now responding
<https://www.chronicle.com/article/despite-return-to-campus-push-remote-work-in-higher-ed-is-increasingly-popular>
by
adopting or tightening policies. For colleges without clear guidance or
oversight, some may inevitably take advantage of the opportunity to drift
further from campus life.

When faculty withdraw, students lose caring advisers, campuses lose
vibrancy, and society loses faith in higher education’s value. Newer
scholars lose mentors, and we all lose some of the collegial relationships
that help propel our personal and professional lives forward. A culture of
absence threatens not only learning outcomes but also students’ sense of
belonging and the civic mission of universities themselves. If we let
disengagement become the norm, the next generation will inherit an
institution hollowed out from within.

What’s behind such faculty disengagement? Surveys offer some clues. A report
<https://www.apa.org/ed/precollege/psychology-teacher-network/introductory-psychology/faculty-burnout-survey>
released
in 2023 found that 64 percent of faculty feel burned out because of work.
The University of California’s 2024 systemwide survey
<https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/reports/report-on-2024-uc-faculty-instructor-experience-survey.pdf>
of
nearly 4,500 faculty members highlighted workload, morale, and
institutional-trust concerns. Burnout alone can push faculty to conserve
energy and cause them to withdraw from what can be considered invisible
labor or unmeasured service, such as mentoring, advising, participating in
governance, and informal availability dependent on physical presence.

Faculty may feel they are under political attack. Statehouses are taking on
bigger roles in academic governance, whether through DEI legislation
<https://www.chronicle.com/article/here-are-the-states-where-lawmakers-are-seeking-to-ban-colleges-dei-efforts>,
bills that increase faculty teaching requirements
<https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-campaign-to-make-professors-teach-more>,
or efforts to introduce new required programming
<https://www.highereddive.com/news/iowa-house-passes-bills-to-dramatically-shift-operations-at-public-universi/814739/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Issue:%202026-03-16%20Higher%20Ed%20Dive%20%5Bissue:82752%5D&utm_term=Higher%20Ed%20Dive>
in
civics and American history. Recent firings of adjunct and tenured faculty
members without due process
<https://www.chronicle.com/article/fire-first-ask-questions-later>,
particularly in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing, only heightened fears.

Some states are also sending messages of skepticism that may undercut
faculty confidence in their institutions. At my institution, the University
of Texas at Austin, Jim Davis became the first president in more than a
century to arrive via a nontraditional, nonacademic path. Also last year,
the Texas Tech University system named State Sen. Brandon Creighton, a
Republican, as its chancellor. Nontraditional leaders can succeed, but
these choices can also signal to campuses that faculty input (and perhaps
presence) is optional. When faculty are sidelined, it becomes easier to
detach and harder to justify coming to campus.

On top of these recent concerns, the professoriate has been transformed by
contingency and low pay. According to the American Association of
University Professors
<https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/topical-reports/contingent-appointments-and-academic>,
roughly two‑thirds of faculty members now hold contingent appointments, a
long drift away from a tenure‑line majority — with predictable consequences
for advising, program continuity, and shared governance. A new national
report <https://sheeo.org/shef_fy24/> finds that state funding per student
grew only 0.8 percent after inflation in 2024. At the same time, colleges
collected less from students as net tuition revenue fell 3.7 percent, the
biggest drop in a single year since 1980. In short, many campuses are being
asked to serve more students with fewer dollars.

Meanwhile, public confidence in higher education remains fragile — down
sharply over the past decade and only recently ticking up from 36 percent
to 42 percent
<https://news.gallup.com/poll/692519/public-trust-higher-rises-recent-low.aspx>
in
a recent Gallup poll. Confidence will not be repaired by legislatures or
presidents alone. It will be rebuilt — or not — by what students and
families experience each week through the faculty on campus teaching,
advising, collaborating, and solving problems.

What I see is not just the turbulence from the pandemic or the new laws and
latest controversies related to anti‑DEI and anti-tenure legislation. What
I see is a slow and steady drift toward disengagement by faculty overseen —
and sometimes ignored by — university leadership. As faculty, we may argue
or express concern about politics or what the federal or state government
is doing, but we have largely ignored the absence that students and
colleagues feel every day on campus. We are in this situation together, and
our basic standards for presence, responsibility, and stewardship are ours
to reclaim regardless of the problems our universities confront.

To be honest, this environment has made me question whether I can, in good
faith, tell my talented students — many of whom want to be professors —
that academe is still a meaningful pathway. There are days when I want to
unplug and disconnect, when the headlines and the daily grind feel like too
much. I remain convinced the work matters, but our institutions are less
consistently rewarding showing up for students, stewarding programs, and
doing the unglamorous maintenance that keeps public universities worthy of
public trust. If I, after years of dedication, struggle with disengagement,
I know many others do too.

That uncertainty is new for me, but it also clarifies something: Presence
is power, and absence is surrender. We do not need permission from
politically appointed presidents or a polarized legislature to recommit to
the core responsibilities of academic life, nor do we need to fix every
working condition right away. Here is what we can do — together,
immediately, and locally — without waiting for a new law, a new leader, or
the next election.

First, we can reaffirm our presence on campus. This is not about
surveillance or managerialism but acknowledging that public universities
exist to serve students and communities. We can set and publish norms for
office hours, campus days, and in-person availability that exceed minimums
— and we can hold ourselves to them. We should hold our deans and chairs to
the same expectations through their performance reviews.

Second, faculty have the power to make advising and mentorship count. We
should adopt transparent advising expectations, track them annually, and
recognize excellent mentorship in merit, promotion, and reappointment
decisions. If research buyouts are routine, we should demand service and
advising buyouts too, so invisible labor does not keep landing on the same
colleagues. Faculty can insist on — and help design — the tracking at the
department and college levels.

Third, we can use our research skills to put university leadership on
academic metrics and hold them to it. Provosts and deans should have public
performance agreements with measurable goals tied to student success,
program quality, faculty development, and campus presence, not just fund
raising, graduation rates, or narrow measures of faculty retention. These
agreements should be created with administration and faculty input to
ensure consistent, transparent evaluation that is publicly reported.

Fourth, we can share the core teaching and service load. Too many faculty
who are experts in their field are not teaching and advising students.
While external grants are vital, the default cannot be that the most expert
and best‑resourced faculty rarely teach core courses, advise, or
participate in governance. Faculty should work to set reasonable,
field-appropriate caps or cycling rules on course and service buyouts.
Faculty committees can propose these caps and ensure that every program’s
core work has enough adults in the room.

Fifth, we must take every effort to reverse adjunctification. Faculty
senates and departments should publish a rolling three‑year conversion plan
with department‑level targets, shifting a defined share of long‑term
adjunct roles into stable appointments — tenure‑track where warranted,
teaching‑focused where it best serves students — and identify the funding
sources we will forgo. Before any course cuts, faculty budget committees
should recommend pausing growth in administrative hires, capturing savings
through attrition, and trimming nonacademic subsidies, such as athletics,
campus marketing and branding, and nonacademic presidential initiatives.
Each spring, colleges and departments should report progress (positions
converted, dollars reallocated, student-faculty ratios) so all faculty,
students, and the public can see administrative bloat turning into
instructional capacity.

Finally, we must adopt faculty compacts. At the department level, faculty
should draft and publish a one‑page compact that includes minimum on‑campus
days, response‑time norms for student emails, timely grading expectations,
peer observation of teaching, and a fair rotation for time‑intensive
service. Make the compact visible to students and faculty. Then meet it.

None of this requires faculty to surrender academic freedom, accept
political litmus tests, or deal with unjust working conditions. The best
defense against politicization of higher education and administrative
shortcomings is demonstrating the faculty’s public value. And even if
presidents, provosts, or regents fail to move, we still have a professional
obligation to do the work that makes our claims credible: show up, teach
well, be available to students, keep programs strong, and steward public
funds responsibly.

Resources may be tight, and the policy climate is adversarial in many
places, but the most demoralizing part of campus life right now is not just
headlines or attacks on academic freedom — it is that too many of us are
quiet quitting or have quietly stepped back from our students, colleagues,
and the programs built in the public’s interest. We are the stewards of
higher education’s future, and we must step up together regardless of the
headwinds. If we do not shoulder that responsibility today, others will
keep reshaping higher education from the outside for years to come — and
they will find a public increasingly willing to see the sector eroded away.

But imagine what renewal could look like: hallways humming with
conversation, students seeking out mentors, departments known for their
energy and care. When we show up for each other and our students, we do not
just protect our profession or our academic freedom — we restore the campus
spirit that drew us here in the first place.
A version of this article appeared in the April 10, 2026, issue
<https://www.chronicle.com/issue/2026/04-10>.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ucr.edu/pipermail/professorsofteaching/attachments/20260428/d9202469/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: When Faculty Stop Showing Up.png
Type: image/png
Size: 3793352 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ucr.edu/pipermail/professorsofteaching/attachments/20260428/d9202469/attachment-0002.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 22275 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.ucr.edu/pipermail/professorsofteaching/attachments/20260428/d9202469/attachment-0003.png>